Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. And uh, Julie,
Speaker 1: you you still take Marta every now and then, don't you?
Speaker 1: The train public transportation system here in New Lanta? And
Speaker 1: uh so, I'm sure you've encountered the various fossil salesman
Speaker 1: on there. They're selling bogus fossils. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: like every time you turn a corner here, somebody with
Speaker 1: trying to sell some sort of like diplodocus uh um, vertebrae, iguana,
Speaker 1: don femur, and you know it's all fake, but you
Speaker 1: still still people gullible enough to buy, I know, And
Speaker 1: I'm always like, don't do that. That's just a buffalo
Speaker 1: wing from Bojangles. Yeah, and the remnants of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that because if you go by just what these guys
Speaker 1: are selling, most of the fossil record was very bojanglesh yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's warm um and we just know
Speaker 1: that that's not how how China source looked. That wasn't
Speaker 1: their morphology. So no, yeah, you know, and I didn't
Speaker 1: help matters that they threw on like an iguana tail
Speaker 1: on the buffalo wing and then tried to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the missing link. Yeah, it's a shame in
Speaker 1: the sham. But you know, shim sham. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a shim sham indeed, but it's a shim sham that
Speaker 1: goes far beyond made up encounters on on on Martha Um.
Speaker 1: Fake fossils are have been going on as long as
Speaker 1: we've had real fossils, and it's it's an interesting history
Speaker 1: because to a certain degree, you have well meaning people
Speaker 1: who just make mistakes, UM, who get caught up in
Speaker 1: their passions or or in you know, there the various
Speaker 1: timeline they have to meet their ambitions, yeah, their ambitions,
Speaker 1: and then you have people who just want to make
Speaker 1: a quick buck and you've got rogues. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it is a spotty history. Yeah, there there are
Speaker 1: some is we're gonna explore in this this episode. There
Speaker 1: are some real characters in uh in fossil history, UM,
Speaker 1: who have been just completely without scruples, that have been
Speaker 1: UH pompous beyond belief and have been willing to take
Speaker 1: more than a few shortcuts to get their name in
Speaker 1: the history books. Yeah, and not to just throw stones
Speaker 1: at glasshouses here, because I've have to mention a couple
Speaker 1: of modern day hoaxes that we have all fallen under
Speaker 1: the spell at one time or another. One is crystal schools,
Speaker 1: right the Yeah, the pre Columbian Mesoamerican like crystal schools
Speaker 1: not real at all. So if you bought one, you know,
Speaker 1: you should be proud and display it, but just know
Speaker 1: that it's it's not an artifact from yesteryear. And in
Speaker 1: the shroud of turrent and that one is a little
Speaker 1: bit controversial in well I know, but it's been carbon
Speaker 1: carbon dated back to the thirteenth century, right, and recently
Speaker 1: there was some Italian scientists who was able to uh,
Speaker 1: the face imprint, was able to do that with another
Speaker 1: piece of cloth and sort of they look, there's the there,
Speaker 1: there's the explanation for the facial print there. So it happens,
Speaker 1: it continues to happen. I think you might get letters
Speaker 1: on that one. But but we'll be all right. But
Speaker 1: the carbon dating, yes, that is a key tool. But
Speaker 1: but then there are other like more We're not gonna
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time on these. But then you
Speaker 1: have stuff like the the old Circus mermaid. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the monkey, the dead monkey to the the back half
Speaker 1: of the fish, and like a cinnamon tail, right, and
Speaker 1: then orangutan jaw. Yeah. I mean it's it's complete, it's
Speaker 1: very creative, but it does it does correct me because
Speaker 1: back in that day, though, how would you know, right
Speaker 1: if it wasn't that circulating I don't know, early nineteenth
Speaker 1: century or something. Um, you don't have the other nut,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have people that are well traveled. Um,
Speaker 1: you may even not have wide access to books to
Speaker 1: reference materials. So if that were to be displayed, then
Speaker 1: you might think, wow, that creature is really out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as we've discussed before, fossils, the fossil record is incomplete,
Speaker 1: and fossils alone do not tell us what the past
Speaker 1: was like. And in fact, I mean we we cannot
Speaker 1: know with any uh you know, strong degree of certainty
Speaker 1: of what the past was like, what Brettist dark days
Speaker 1: consisted of. We we make very educated guesses and and
Speaker 1: and theorize what it was like. And we based those
Speaker 1: theories on the fossils. We based it on on our
Speaker 1: use of basically large family trees and filling in the blanks.
Speaker 1: A lot of it just we just put a lot
Speaker 1: of logic into it and a lot of deduction. It's
Speaker 1: like solving a crime where you go in and you
Speaker 1: look at a lot of evidence and you put it
Speaker 1: together and try to form a complete picture of what happened. Right,
Speaker 1: you're extrapolating to some degree. Right, So early on there
Speaker 1: were though there were fewer tools there was there were,
Speaker 1: especially if you're trying to build a family tree. Like ideally,
Speaker 1: if you build a family tree, you want to just
Speaker 1: continue building something that's already been created, but to build
Speaker 1: one from stress from scratch, uh, there there's room for
Speaker 1: a lot of air, So we can keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: We talked about this too, and even the Dinosaur Sex podcast,
Speaker 1: because we were trying to figure out whether what sort
Speaker 1: of um equipment dinosaurs had um to reproduce and you
Speaker 1: still have to extrapolate their right, we looked at alligators
Speaker 1: and basically figured out that this was probably the best
Speaker 1: logical conclusion in terms of reproduction. You have to look
Speaker 1: at at modern examples of the modern descendants of dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and sort of work backwards and and again, so so
Speaker 1: little actually makes it into fossil into the fossil record
Speaker 1: because it has to be covered in mud, it has
Speaker 1: to undergo this fossilization process that does not happen to everything.
Speaker 1: And then the more of a creature there there happens
Speaker 1: to be, the more likely that creature is to wind
Speaker 1: up in the fossil record. Whereas a like top tier
Speaker 1: predator um of which there are fewer, very unlikely that
Speaker 1: it will show up in the fossil record at all.
Speaker 1: So we have our challenges, and that that makes for
Speaker 1: more chiconry, I suppose out there in in the fossil world.
Speaker 1: But in speaking of the incompleteness of the fossil record,
Speaker 1: the other thing is that fossils themselves are You rarely
Speaker 1: find a complete specimen. There are complete fossil specimens, and
Speaker 1: they're great, they're very important, but they're not that common.
Speaker 1: So if you see a guy on the train trying
Speaker 1: to sell a complete fossil skeleton, that's a good there's
Speaker 1: a good chance that that's a fake. Uh So, So
Speaker 1: that's sort of a red flag there when people are
Speaker 1: dealing with with fossils. Oh, well, this one's a complete
Speaker 1: fossil uh uh skeleton of this uh, this long departed creature. Well,
Speaker 1: let's take a closer to look, right. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: very possible to you that that person went online and
Speaker 1: looked up how to make a fake fossil, which I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding. There's there's an article. It's like a wiki
Speaker 1: article or something. So I mean, you know, it's pretty
Speaker 1: it's obvious that this is stuff that's going on either
Speaker 1: for someone's own enjoyment or to pull a hoax or
Speaker 1: to make a quick buck. Yeah. Now you know you
Speaker 1: get down with modern tools, you can get down and
Speaker 1: look at at them and like look at the chemical analysis.
Speaker 1: You can whip out a microscope uh uh. And and
Speaker 1: also you can just look for other things like evidence
Speaker 1: of sanding. Um. You can scratch uh scratch the actual
Speaker 1: supposed fossil to see if there's wax or glue and
Speaker 1: its constructor staining and uh. Of fakes. There are basically
Speaker 1: three types of fossil fakes. There are, first, there are
Speaker 1: those that contain no original fossil material um, such as shapes,
Speaker 1: carved and rock. And then there are those that do
Speaker 1: contain original fossil material but are entirely or partially altered
Speaker 1: in order to give the appearance of a more complete specimen. Uh.
Speaker 1: So an example this would be a sculpted, uh carved
Speaker 1: skull from a fragment of limb bone. And then there
Speaker 1: are Frankenstein specimens and these um uh these that are
Speaker 1: true fossils, but they're artificially combined with from multiple individuals.
Speaker 1: So you have a fossil, a little bit of fossil
Speaker 1: from creature A, a little bit from fossil from creature B.
Speaker 1: You want to get your name out there and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and find your own dinosaurs, so you just
Speaker 1: build your own out of the available parts. Yeah, d
Speaker 1: I y dinosaur fossil. Yeah, which that was again, this
Speaker 1: building your own dinosaur and trying to get named was
Speaker 1: a little more common previously, but not it's not as
Speaker 1: rare as you might think, even in today's world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, I talked about a little bit um
Speaker 1: that it's it was sort of like the wild West.
Speaker 1: It was very much to the extent that there were
Speaker 1: hostile groups of Native Americans around, hostile tribes that you
Speaker 1: might have to contend with. Ye. Well, and that's the
Speaker 1: fact that this was a burgeoning field right back in
Speaker 1: the day, and that there are people who were competing
Speaker 1: to try to get their names out ahead of someone
Speaker 1: else and saying I've discovered this creature or that creature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the it was the field itself. They were
Speaker 1: still learning how to do it. Uh, I mean, archaeology
Speaker 1: and paleontology both were kind of evolving films, evolving fields
Speaker 1: throughout the the wild West period. Well, bronze source is
Speaker 1: a good example of that, right, because Epiporus is that
Speaker 1: the real name that was the first fossil of that
Speaker 1: was discovered. Then Bronosaurus was discovered and thought to be
Speaker 1: a different subspecies, right, um, and so then they realized
Speaker 1: later on that that that these were actually the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was uh, due to a man by the name
Speaker 1: of Othaniel Charles Marsh, who I believe we're gonna get
Speaker 1: to in just a little bit here. Yeah. Yeah, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about and get into that. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Marsh all right. So you had Oathaniel Charles Marsh
Speaker 1: and then you had his counterpart, Edward Danker Cope. All right,
Speaker 1: these guys were somewhere in some respects both born to
Speaker 1: wealthy US families, a lot of money in the family,
Speaker 1: but they were both fascinated from an early age by
Speaker 1: natural sciences. What time period was again, this was this
Speaker 1: was like you know, like late So you had Cope. Uh.
Speaker 1: Cope was brilliant interpreter of fossils, all right, he was.
Speaker 1: He was a hard worker, um Like during his life
Speaker 1: he ended up publishing like more than four papers and
Speaker 1: monographs on paleontology. Um. And he and he risked life
Speaker 1: and limb for science. I mean he was he was.
Speaker 1: He was out there, you know, risking attack from from
Speaker 1: hostile tribes, uh and uh in life and limb to
Speaker 1: to get these these fossils. But he was also really arrogant. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was really hot tempered, and this would become a
Speaker 1: defining part of who he was. Marsh On the other hand,
Speaker 1: Marsha spent his entire career at Yale University, where he's
Speaker 1: Professor of Paleontology and curator of the Peabody Museum in
Speaker 1: Natural History. Now, he wasn't as uh as bright as Cope.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that's the or at least that's that's what some
Speaker 1: of the historians argue that he he maybe didn't have
Speaker 1: the natural intellectual gift for it, but he but what
Speaker 1: he lacked he made up for in uh is just
Speaker 1: just being a ruthless and masterful organizer. And he hit
Speaker 1: a real knack for the politics of the system too.
Speaker 1: But but again, he was this This guy was not
Speaker 1: just like, oh, I'm going to make some money off
Speaker 1: of fossils. No, he was He was legitimately obsessed and
Speaker 1: interested in just in awe of of of these these
Speaker 1: wondrous relic of the past people we're finding in the
Speaker 1: in the earth. And tell me if I'm wrong on this,
Speaker 1: if I've got it backwards. But is it. Marsh who
Speaker 1: looked at Cops one of Cope's assemblage of fossil parts,
Speaker 1: pointed out that the head was on the opposite side
Speaker 1: of the vertebrae. Yeah. Now, these two and I mean
Speaker 1: this was like and these are fighting words, right, like
Speaker 1: it's almost like dueling words. This was this was the
Speaker 1: incident that really kicked things off because they started off
Speaker 1: they kind of knew each other a little bit. You know, paleontology,
Speaker 1: especially in those days, was kind of a small tent,
Speaker 1: so so these two they knew who they each other were.
Speaker 1: But then Cope went on this expedition to Kansas and
Speaker 1: he lined up the fossils of an elasmosairos and published
Speaker 1: a paper about it. All right, but Cope had placed
Speaker 1: the head on the wrong end, which sounds, you know, laughable,
Speaker 1: but again, this is an earlier age of paleontology piecing
Speaker 1: these things together. But so he placed the head on
Speaker 1: the wrong end um on the tail of the of
Speaker 1: the spine. And when he found out, uh, Cope immediately
Speaker 1: begin you know, he realized he made a mistake, and
Speaker 1: he starts buying back all the papers that published his
Speaker 1: his incorrect illustration, you know, because he was a prideful
Speaker 1: dude and he made this error, and so and again,
Speaker 1: how many how many copies of this could have possibly
Speaker 1: been out there? You know? Yeah, I know, I mean
Speaker 1: it's self publishing, right or even like big publishing houses.
Speaker 1: We're talking maybe like I don't know, fifty or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like the Internet where once you pushed publish,
Speaker 1: it's out there somewhere. Yeah. And he's probably like, all
Speaker 1: my family members, give me back those copies right now. Yeah. So, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: he did this. But then marsh like really started pointing
Speaker 1: the figure and finger and he just seemed really to
Speaker 1: delight in this as well, um, you know, saying that
Speaker 1: saying that Cope made made made made this error, and
Speaker 1: that he had and that you know that he had
Speaker 1: always tried to cover up for his own mistakes. And
Speaker 1: so it's yeah, and so what would follow It would
Speaker 1: be two decades of feuding between these two um and
Speaker 1: during this time, and it's it's it's interesting because this
Speaker 1: feud because on one hand, this feud ended up fueling
Speaker 1: a lot of important discoveries in paleontology, well, right, because
Speaker 1: they were both racing to the finish line, right right.
Speaker 1: It became a race who could just who could discover
Speaker 1: the most of fossils, who could discuss who could have
Speaker 1: name that the most specimens and uh and wind up
Speaker 1: as the bigger name in the history books. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's fueling a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of discovery. But on the other hand, uh Cope winds
Speaker 1: up rushing and making more careless errors, such as the
Speaker 1: Bronosaurus um uh Apodosaurus incident that we we just mentioned,
Speaker 1: where he basedly in eighteen seventy seven, he um he
Speaker 1: found the the apodosaurus and publishes uh um you know,
Speaker 1: information on that, and then he hastily named and described
Speaker 1: another one the Bronosaurus based on incomplete materials. We'd later
Speaker 1: find out that this was the same species. That's why
Speaker 1: then we revert from again from bronosaurs to a potosaurus
Speaker 1: because when he first discovered he was named apodosars, right,
Speaker 1: And this is all just the best his front of
Speaker 1: me you know which, Yeah, I mean, I do think
Speaker 1: it's the classic front of me example. Yeah, I get
Speaker 1: a front of me is such a weird term. I mean,
Speaker 1: these guys, really there's so much well, yes, but you know,
Speaker 1: vinegar in this relationship. There's a lot of vinegar. It's
Speaker 1: very acidic. But you know, surely, like he said, it's
Speaker 1: a small group. And I'm sure that they were civil
Speaker 1: to each other, but their hatred for each other definitely fueled.
Speaker 1: They were civil for a while, but like at these
Speaker 1: twenty years of feuding and and like I said, cope,
Speaker 1: he made some mistakes. You get in a hurry and
Speaker 1: make some careless airs. Marsh was more careful in his work,
Speaker 1: but he was all he was more ready to resort
Speaker 1: to result to resort to bribery or bullying um in
Speaker 1: in the pursuit of these specimens. Uh. And also they
Speaker 1: were also weren't they also driving out the price because
Speaker 1: before that they were actually getting the fossils for freight,
Speaker 1: right um mostly, But then when they started competing against
Speaker 1: each other, they were buying them off of people, and
Speaker 1: other people couldn't compete because they couldn't spend that much
Speaker 1: money on getting those fossils. And and they just continue
Speaker 1: to fight in the like first in the in the
Speaker 1: in the scientific papers, but even in the news. It
Speaker 1: carries over the newspapers because every time one of them,
Speaker 1: you know, make some claim or publishes a paper, the
Speaker 1: other ones there to just you know, tear it apart
Speaker 1: and make all sorts of nasty, potentially libelous comments about
Speaker 1: about what they're doing their work, you know, just tearing
Speaker 1: them to ribbons. Also, each scientist had hired a crew
Speaker 1: field crew to help them unearthed and ship back these fossils,
Speaker 1: right and the rival crews were known to spy in
Speaker 1: each other to dynamite their own and each other's secret
Speaker 1: locations to keep their opponents from digging there, and occasionally
Speaker 1: they'd steal other they steal each other's fossils um and
Speaker 1: uh and and and all the time, you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're working in harsh conditions there the Native American tribes
Speaker 1: are are out there and aren't too happy about it,
Speaker 1: I mean with good reason of him. Yeah yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean Marsh particular was known to uh. I read an
Speaker 1: account of where he uh he was really interested by
Speaker 1: the way that one particular tribe would put their dead
Speaker 1: up on these, uh, the stilted platforms, and he was like,
Speaker 1: let's go take a look at those skulls. So they
Speaker 1: just you know, him and his career, just go and
Speaker 1: start digging around in the bones. And I liked it.
Speaker 1: When we were discussing it before earlier, you were talking
Speaker 1: about how like if they had made a movie out
Speaker 1: of it would probably be more in the spirit of
Speaker 1: their will be blood. Yeah, yeah, because because it's that
Speaker 1: level of just like all these guys are so unhappy
Speaker 1: and nasty to each other. It's they just his ruble
Speaker 1: people and so calculating. Yeah. Um. And it reminds me
Speaker 1: too of the Baringer hoax, because it's in the same
Speaker 1: sort of spirit. It's perhaps not as um as involved
Speaker 1: as this. In fact, were you going to talk about
Speaker 1: like the last sort of kicking the teeth? Oh you
Speaker 1: mean with the skull Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was yeah.
Speaker 1: So again twenty years of feuding. By the end of it,
Speaker 1: both of them are financially ruined, um, because they end
Speaker 1: up financing their own expeditions because to get ahead, got
Speaker 1: to get ahead, and like, oh I gotta put my
Speaker 1: own money into it. Fine. Eventually Cope dies, he dies
Speaker 1: in after he's just you know, he's had to like
Speaker 1: sell part of his fossil collection just against me. But
Speaker 1: he has his skull donated to science so that his
Speaker 1: brain can be measured, um, and he's he's a big
Speaker 1: hope here is that his brain will be found larger
Speaker 1: than that of Marsh. But Marsh Marsh didn't actually pony
Speaker 1: after this challenge, which is of course silly anyway, because
Speaker 1: the size of brain doesn't really have anything to do
Speaker 1: with with how smart the individual, right right right, which
Speaker 1: they didn't know them, but um, but the arrogance, the
Speaker 1: sheer arrogance, and it's like that's your defining thing. It's
Speaker 1: like like, clearly these guys were like the hatred that
Speaker 1: they have for each other becomes more important than the science,
Speaker 1: even though they both contributed a lot to science and
Speaker 1: we're both scientifically great men, even if they were both
Speaker 1: kind of jerks. This presentation is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Intel sponsors of tomorrow. And that does seem to be
Speaker 1: a theme like the jerk thing, Like if you're a jerk,
Speaker 1: you will suffer in this particular scenario. And that's when
Speaker 1: that's when we'll turn and look at Barringer hoax or
Speaker 1: Barringer hoax. And this is Dr Johan Barthelomew Adam Berenger
Speaker 1: or Barner. I'm just gonna say five different ways. Um.
Speaker 1: He was professor and the dean of medicine University of
Speaker 1: Horsebrook in Germany in the seventeen hundreds, and he collected
Speaker 1: fossils and UM. He wasn't an expert, but he was
Speaker 1: certainly very interested in the in the burgeoning field. UM.
Speaker 1: But one day he was completely thunderstruck when students of
Speaker 1: his delivered hundreds of carvings, and over time, I think
Speaker 1: it was numbered like in the two thousands. UM. And
Speaker 1: these carvings, they they figured they had all sorts of animals. Um.
Speaker 1: There was one that had frogs mating, which should have
Speaker 1: raised the red flag. Um. Birds flying. Some of the
Speaker 1: rocks had birds flying birds. Would a flying bird become fossil?
Speaker 1: As you know? Yeah, I know, I mean in the
Speaker 1: act of flag. Yeah, um. And then some of the
Speaker 1: rocks had Syrian, Hebrew, and Babylonian inscriptions, and Baringer came
Speaker 1: to believe that these stones were created by God as
Speaker 1: a test of human faith, and he really struggled. Or
Speaker 1: possibly just for God's pleasure, that was another one. That's right,
Speaker 1: God was either trying to teach us, or maybe he
Speaker 1: was just doing it for fun. He's got he can
Speaker 1: do what he wants, he can write words all over.
Speaker 1: He didn't come to this conclusion right away, and he
Speaker 1: actually started with the more logical conclusions, like perhaps this
Speaker 1: could have been like an ancient society that um carved
Speaker 1: these things. And then he started to think that they
Speaker 1: were actual, you know, uh, possible fossil records. And then
Speaker 1: you know, as they became more and more elaborate, especially
Speaker 1: with the Hebrew running song, that's when he began to
Speaker 1: link it with the existence of of um, some sort
Speaker 1: of like godlike material um that was brought down right
Speaker 1: when when when really it was just he was kind
Speaker 1: of a pompous dude, and some of his his co
Speaker 1: workers decided to mess with him. Yeah, two of his colleagues.
Speaker 1: They spent all of this time. Oh this was another
Speaker 1: reason why he thought that it couldn't have been anything
Speaker 1: but but God, because he thought, how who would go
Speaker 1: to the trouble of carving and polishing two thousand stones? Well,
Speaker 1: two colleagues that hit your guts, that's um. They actually
Speaker 1: planned them for for Bearinger students to find and then
Speaker 1: delivered to Bearinger. Um because they said, because Baringer was
Speaker 1: so arrogant and despised them all. And this was j
Speaker 1: j Ignantes Roderick and yourge von Eckhart. So Eckhart and
Speaker 1: Roderick sounds like a musical cool group, but yes, um.
Speaker 1: So they actually did try to put a quasi stop
Speaker 1: to it because they found out that Benger was about
Speaker 1: to publish a book about these stones, which would have
Speaker 1: made him the laughing stock. Yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: so excited about this, right, But so they started to
Speaker 1: we've gone too far. Yeah, we've gone too far. You
Speaker 1: need to kill this. This guy is about to ruin
Speaker 1: his career. Uh. So they started saying, okay, well, we
Speaker 1: don't actually think there's a real fossils and spreading rumors,
Speaker 1: and he thought they were just trying to discredit him
Speaker 1: at that point he's like, He's like, though they were
Speaker 1: jealousy and but this is so funny because this is
Speaker 1: where like the whole confirmation bias cognitive dissonance comes into play,
Speaker 1: where you know, you believe something so itally that you
Speaker 1: can't help but now take all this mounting evidence and
Speaker 1: continue to believe that what might be a lie, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But so anyway that that he does actually publish this
Speaker 1: book and um, and he does not come to the
Speaker 1: realization that these are fakes until the last stone arrives
Speaker 1: and it actually has his name carved on it, and
Speaker 1: then he finally says, Okay, I've been had, but by
Speaker 1: this time it's too late, and Inshel takes legal action
Speaker 1: against those colleagues and uh, it's not pretty. And then
Speaker 1: they actually kind of looked like jerked for doing it.
Speaker 1: And he actually he continues to have an academic career
Speaker 1: something for like fourteen years afterward. But man, so that's
Speaker 1: a serious commitment to a hoax. They in court, they
Speaker 1: didn't own up to it. They they said that they
Speaker 1: had devised the suit the scheme quote because Barringer was
Speaker 1: so arrogant and despised them. All. Yeah, I mean, there
Speaker 1: you go. I mean that it's so funny what what
Speaker 1: makes us do the things that we do as humans
Speaker 1: and the energy that we expand on it. So there
Speaker 1: you go. I mean that those are some really good
Speaker 1: examples of that time period and that sort of ambition,
Speaker 1: the raw ambition that's fueling this UM. But then I
Speaker 1: think we should probably talk a little bit about one
Speaker 1: of the most famous hoaxes, which is the Piltdown Man.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, uh, this is in China. Correct, Actually
Speaker 1: Piltdown was in Britain. Oh wait, I have a confused
Speaker 1: with something. I think. I think you're thinking about the
Speaker 1: pilt Nan chicken. Oh yes, I have the pitt Down
Speaker 1: chicken in mind. Which is which is Chinese? We'll get
Speaker 1: to that, Okay, So Piltdown Man. Nineteen eleven, there's a
Speaker 1: laborer who found a piece of skull that he passed
Speaker 1: on to a man named Charles Dawson, who was an
Speaker 1: amateur archaeologist, and along with a guy named Sir Anthony
Speaker 1: Smith Woodward, who was a more esteemed UM scientist, Dawson
Speaker 1: presented the reconstructed skull to the public as the missing
Speaker 1: link because at this time, obviously Darwin's UM all of
Speaker 1: his information has been out there, there's been linked this
Speaker 1: big brew haha to find the missing link right, um,
Speaker 1: the human kind's earliest ancestor. And the discovery actually eclipsed
Speaker 1: the discovery of the Neanderthal Man in Germany, which is
Speaker 1: this is important r Yeah, because the Neanderthal man was
Speaker 1: is a very important fossil that actually is is real,
Speaker 1: wasn't made up? Yeah, And to talk about the conditions
Speaker 1: a little bit to it's nineteen eleven. There's a rival
Speaker 1: going on between Germany and Britain. At this point. Britain
Speaker 1: is the only country I believe that France, Span and
Speaker 1: Germany all have um, some fossil record of earlier man
Speaker 1: and uh, Britain doesn't. Nothing. So in terms of national pride,
Speaker 1: I think that they were definitely in a position to
Speaker 1: believe this or want to believe this and put this forward. Um.
Speaker 1: But then more remains show up, including another partial school
Speaker 1: and what actually looked look like a cricket bat. Okay,
Speaker 1: so honestly it's getting someone is getting a little bit
Speaker 1: more brazen and and trying to to mess them up.
Speaker 1: But again they try to say, oh no, this cricket
Speaker 1: that is is probably some bone or femur or something.
Speaker 1: They're they're trying to explain it away. Um. But then
Speaker 1: in scientific tests revealed that the school was actually an
Speaker 1: amalgamation of a human school and orangutinan's jaw with a
Speaker 1: canine tooth. Um. This school had been staying the canone
Speaker 1: tooth had been painted and filed. So it becomes a
Speaker 1: mystery of who done it really, because Dawson by this
Speaker 1: time he's long passed. I mean he passed actually nineteen
Speaker 1: fift so whatever secrets he has about it, he's taken
Speaker 1: to the grave with them. Um. And then there's this
Speaker 1: theory that it just gets even weirder. There's this theory
Speaker 1: that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is actually perpetrating this hoax
Speaker 1: against the scientific community. One because he was made fun
Speaker 1: of mercilessly when he was talking about spiritualism, right, the
Speaker 1: scientific community was like, seriously, like you you're believing in
Speaker 1: uh in something that is not happening here. Plasma is
Speaker 1: not hitting you in the face, and the table is
Speaker 1: not actually rising. And so he was pretty mortified by that,
Speaker 1: and he was mad, and he lived think like thirty
Speaker 1: miles from the excavation site, and he would have had
Speaker 1: the financial means to pull off this hoax, so you know,
Speaker 1: the jury is still out. And he had he had
Speaker 1: a little a little history with contemplating how people would
Speaker 1: pull on over on the authority, right, mystery right, all right?
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, it's very possible that he was just
Speaker 1: doing this for his own fun and amusement. But then,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people point to Dawson perhaps
Speaker 1: is doing this, and even Woodward, who was the scientist
Speaker 1: that helped Dawson ford the pilt down Man. So again
Speaker 1: it's not really clear who actually did it, why they
Speaker 1: did it. But again you've got those conditions. You've got
Speaker 1: Britain not having any sort of uh example of early man.
Speaker 1: You've got this rivalry between them. You know, you're gearing
Speaker 1: up toward War one, and you know it's obvious that
Speaker 1: something like this could happen. It's it's ironic that we
Speaker 1: just recorded an EPI so on the Polcebo effect and
Speaker 1: about our willingness to believe in something that it isn't
Speaker 1: so and uh and we're we encounter a similar thing
Speaker 1: with with it with these A fossil remains supposed fossil remains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you cannot help it. I mean if the
Speaker 1: person is, if they're that excited about it, especially if
Speaker 1: it's a matter of national pride, then they probably are
Speaker 1: going to overlook a lot of those red flags and it.
Speaker 1: Barringer is another good example, right, I mean, even his
Speaker 1: writings in his book about the stones, he would talk
Speaker 1: about the degree that the stones were polished and wonder
Speaker 1: about them and never even think to himself, well, perhaps
Speaker 1: you know, man, did that? You know, uh, you know
Speaker 1: it's not such a great mystery. Yeah. Well, then there's
Speaker 1: a like I mentioned. There's also the pit down chicken,
Speaker 1: which has no connection to the flanky chicken. Well or
Speaker 1: to to the example we just discussed. Yes, yes, pit
Speaker 1: down chicken. This involves a national geographic society. Uh go
Speaker 1: back to all the way back to October. So so
Speaker 1: this one's fairly recent. Um. They announced a major discovery.
Speaker 1: They said they found a five million year old fossil
Speaker 1: in northeastern China and that it appeared to be the
Speaker 1: missing link between dinosaurs and birds. Um. For over twenty years,
Speaker 1: you know, Palin talks have debated whether birds were descended
Speaker 1: from dinosaur. Did you get to that that whole debate
Speaker 1: of of did birds come from dinosaurs? And then this
Speaker 1: other idea that dinosaurs became birds. Yeah, you know, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So here we go conclusive proof. Um, a bird with
Speaker 1: a tail, yeah, bird with the tail. But then you
Speaker 1: had this, uh, this scientist, Chinese scientists by the name
Speaker 1: of zoo Zing And what did he find? Oh, he
Speaker 1: found the archaeo raptor's tail or. He he was the
Speaker 1: first person to to identify the archaeo raptor right the
Speaker 1: pit down chicken. Yeah. And then but then he found
Speaker 1: found the exact same tail, only attached to a different body. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was like something, it was a miss here. Yes,
Speaker 1: some thing has been put together and it's uh and
Speaker 1: and they're trying to pull one over on us. Someone
Speaker 1: had had taken one of the slabs bearing the tail
Speaker 1: fossil and attached it to a fossil of a bird,
Speaker 1: thereby producing this marvelous hybrid of the dinosaur in the
Speaker 1: bird creature, the frank and bird dinosaur. Yeah. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. National Geographic then published a mission of
Speaker 1: its mistaken two thousand. Right like a year later, they
Speaker 1: owned up to it. They didn't, you know, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they saided they said, one of the reasons for
Speaker 1: the dupe was that they were rushing for publication before
Speaker 1: scholar scholarly journals had a chance to peer review it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here you end up with the dragging science journalism
Speaker 1: into the mix, which is which which becomes the push,
Speaker 1: like you said, to to to get something out to
Speaker 1: to go ahead and name it, to to to get
Speaker 1: the get the TV show started, the get the news
Speaker 1: releases out there. I mean, seriously, it seems like any
Speaker 1: big paleontal, logical or or or archaeological discovery nowadays comes
Speaker 1: with a TV deal already in place. Well, and it's
Speaker 1: not even just a paleontology. I mean you think about
Speaker 1: the arsenic um, the life forms the arsenic that that
Speaker 1: recently was talked about, you know, other than Carmen based
Speaker 1: life forms, that there's this possibility of arsenic based life forms,
Speaker 1: and of course that information was released and then people say,
Speaker 1: whoa this this, let's look at this a little bit closer.
Speaker 1: This is really overstating this, this one part of this study. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's not just it's everywhere right, everybody wants to
Speaker 1: scoop and how you mean we're information junk piece. We
Speaker 1: can't help it, and then we're part of the information. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean we're I mean, we're basically science writers, science journalists,
Speaker 1: so we're kind of a part of the system. But
Speaker 1: it is what it is. It's true, that's true. We
Speaker 1: try to we try to inform into light within reason. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That being said, you know you had talked about the
Speaker 1: Fiji mermaid. Yes, yeah, yeah, the the the ape and
Speaker 1: the fish Zony gether to look like a mermaid, very
Speaker 1: grotesque and the non sexy mermaid totally non sexy. But
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't it funny that we think about that
Speaker 1: and we we scoff at it, And then you've got
Speaker 1: the pit dawn chicken, right, which is really a more
Speaker 1: elaborate form. Yeah, the same thing really, just you know,
Speaker 1: take two things, put it together, and you've got something new. Um.
Speaker 1: Another example that I really like that we won't go
Speaker 1: into a lot of detail about was the Hide the Hydros.
Speaker 1: This was and it was quote unquote found by quote
Speaker 1: unquote doctor Albert cotch Um quote unquote coch Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he um he He's miraculously found this gigantic fossil of
Speaker 1: a reptile hundred and fourteen feet long. You know, it
Speaker 1: looks like the Locknous monster is some sort of big
Speaker 1: sea serpent. But what he actually did is he just
Speaker 1: pieced together the bones of five fossil whales and then
Speaker 1: chose the specimen, you know, throughout the u s in England. Um.
Speaker 1: The hoax was later exposed, but for a brief period
Speaker 1: of time he gets to uh to you know, to
Speaker 1: to wallow in the aim of having found this miraculous
Speaker 1: fossil specimen. Yeah, and this is certainly the circus side
Speaker 1: of it, right. And another good example which is fairly recent.
Speaker 1: I believe it's two thousand and three recent Ish lochness Monster,
Speaker 1: which is obviously that is a huge tourist destination because
Speaker 1: of old NeSSI purported to be swimming around in the
Speaker 1: lake Um. But in two thousand three a man found
Speaker 1: the remains of a creature when he tripped and fell
Speaker 1: into the lochness Um. What were the chances that ript
Speaker 1: and fell in the what is that I just tripped on? This,
Speaker 1: of course was thought to be the fossil of NeSSI
Speaker 1: or one of Nessie's ancestors, I don't know. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was actually Um that people thought was proof that
Speaker 1: the monster had existed or did exist. But it turns
Speaker 1: out that the fossils belonged to apply a Sore, which
Speaker 1: is a dinosaur that measured thirty five ft long and
Speaker 1: had a long serpentine neck. Uh. And what the fossil
Speaker 1: was doing in fresh water lake isn't really known because
Speaker 1: it's obvious that this fall usole had um then exposed
Speaker 1: to the elements of the sea for very long. But
Speaker 1: like somebody who really wanted to believe, when out I
Speaker 1: bought some fossils, wrote out in like a picture in
Speaker 1: a rowboat and just dumped them. Absolutely they did, and
Speaker 1: they just waited for someone to I guess, fall into
Speaker 1: the Lochness and discover them. Um. But you know you
Speaker 1: have to wonder, like you know, it's the Scottish tourist industry.
Speaker 1: Are they like up to Shenanigans there? What's going on?
Speaker 1: Or is this just some well meaning local person um?
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't really be interested if there's anybody from
Speaker 1: Scotland it's listening to this podcast to what degree the
Speaker 1: Lochness Monster. Um, it's felt like people to exist or
Speaker 1: perhaps have existed, because it's very intriguing. I'm intrigued by
Speaker 1: the Lockness Monster. Do I think it exists. Now. What's
Speaker 1: kind of like in our own state of Georgia when
Speaker 1: when those two guys claimed to have found the big
Speaker 1: foot in the in the they didn't claim to find
Speaker 1: a big foot in a dead big foot in the cooler,
Speaker 1: but they had the picture of the dead big foot
Speaker 1: in the cooler, which was by the time the picture
Speaker 1: came out, was clearly like a gorilla costume in apler
Speaker 1: in the styrofoam cooler. But for a brief period of time,
Speaker 1: they're like less than an afternoon. It seemed it seemed
Speaker 1: possible that, oh, my goodness, maybe the age of the
Speaker 1: bigfoot mystery is over and we're entering a new age
Speaker 1: in which we we know what's up. Yeah, we finally
Speaker 1: found the proof. And it was the equal parts um
Speaker 1: exhilarating and and and disappointing, because you didn't want the
Speaker 1: mystery to go away, but you also wanted to find
Speaker 1: out and luckily we didn't have to do either. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's always the Chepicabra, right. If you can't
Speaker 1: have your big Foot, you've got the Chepicabra Mexican goat sucker, Yeah,
Speaker 1: are right, So there are plenty of other zero ific
Speaker 1: characters out there. Yeah, unicorns, yeah, cryptids, Yeah. Crypto zoology,
Speaker 1: that's what I was struggling for. Well, in crypto zoology,
Speaker 1: when you get into a lot of these uh, a
Speaker 1: lot of some of the the mythic creatures, you're actually
Speaker 1: getting into a situation where where people were interpreting fossils
Speaker 1: at some point, like in the you know, in the
Speaker 1: ancient past, you had people who are much more inclined
Speaker 1: to say, you know, cut up all the animals around them, uh,
Speaker 1: to eat or the process in the clothing. So they
Speaker 1: find some sort of weird fossil remains these you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like a skeleton of something, and this they're saying, hmmm,
Speaker 1: that doesn't look like the insides of the cat that
Speaker 1: I had for breakfast that I cut up, or the
Speaker 1: dog that I cut up and had last night, or
Speaker 1: the cow that I just finished cutting on this afternoon.
Speaker 1: So what is that? And then they have to sort
Speaker 1: of do this kind of without you know, the aative science,
Speaker 1: their actual paleontology. We have to do some sort of
Speaker 1: primitive building in their mind and imagining what it might
Speaker 1: have looked like and then imagining that it either did
Speaker 1: or does exist yeah, and again there's that thing we
Speaker 1: talked about this in the placebo effect. This this the
Speaker 1: mind having to tell itself a piece of fiction to
Speaker 1: make sense of the world. Right, Um, so we can't
Speaker 1: help it. We have to make up these these cool creatures. Um.
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me too. There's a uh This American
Speaker 1: Life episode and they were talking about uh, beliefs that
Speaker 1: we've held that aren't true or proved not to be true.
Speaker 1: In there, there was one woman they interviewed, and she's
Speaker 1: perfectly smart. You know then when I'm talking about very
Speaker 1: smart woman, educated, so on and so forth, saying um.
Speaker 1: But she was sitting around one day talking to some
Speaker 1: coworkers and people were making a joke I think about unicorns,
Speaker 1: and she said very innocently like, yeah, I wonder what
Speaker 1: was that, something like do you think we'll ever be
Speaker 1: able to bring them back? Or yeah, yeah. It was
Speaker 1: some comment that was just kind of like there was
Speaker 1: along the lines of I'd love to see one some day,
Speaker 1: or yeah, don't you think they were really cool? Or
Speaker 1: they went extinct or something like that. Through no fault
Speaker 1: of her own, she existed in a in a world
Speaker 1: in her head where the unicorn existed like she nobody
Speaker 1: had ever told her explicitly, Like the other example that
Speaker 1: they brought up in that with somebody who thought that
Speaker 1: the like children like the children were like the deer
Speaker 1: crossing sign. The deer exing sign was that you pronounce that.
Speaker 1: You pronounced the crossing, the exing, you pounced zo. So
Speaker 1: she just grew up always mispronouncing it. So this is
Speaker 1: like a different version of the lifelong misprint pronunciation issue.
Speaker 1: But I always think about that moment she had, how
Speaker 1: horrified shose to them because she said, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: when extinct, and then everybody laughed. And then when they
Speaker 1: saw her face and that she was completely earnest, there
Speaker 1: was like the crickets and the sad looks towards her way,
Speaker 1: and that's when her dreams were dashed. Yeah, they had
Speaker 1: just killed unicorns for one individual. I know, I know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know. You can see how these uh,
Speaker 1: these beliefs, misheld miscon misconceptions kind of bloom in our mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are not immune. So there you have it. We
Speaker 1: have we have a couple of listeners males I want
Speaker 1: to get to here. We have one from Trevor. Trevor
Speaker 1: writes in and says, I listened to the podcast and
Speaker 1: enjoyed it thoroughly, always talking about the dog podcast so
Speaker 1: well played. You now have a loyal subscriber. I've always
Speaker 1: pondered my dog's love for me. Some background infol I
Speaker 1: have always had canines and currently have a beagle name
Speaker 1: Reginald Reggie for short. I got redged, then he short
Speaker 1: shorts of the more. I got redged when he was
Speaker 1: a year old from a shelter, which was when I
Speaker 1: truly began to contemplate the man dog relationship. I eventually
Speaker 1: derived that he loves me only out of necessity. I
Speaker 1: will explain. When I first got him, he did everything
Speaker 1: in his power to escape to no avail thanks Satan
Speaker 1: okay Um. He then became more comfortable and loyal when
Speaker 1: he was content in his surroundings. Though through this transformation,
Speaker 1: I concluded that I had, in a fact Stockholm to
Speaker 1: my pop with Stockholm syndrome, of course, where um a
Speaker 1: kidnapped individual falls in love with it kidnappers um out
Speaker 1: of necessity for his happiness. He resigned to the fact
Speaker 1: that he was stuck with me, just like a captive human. Eventually,
Speaker 1: his will was broken and became a good dog. I
Speaker 1: wonder if this correlation has been thought up previously. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting notion and can be translated to all domesticated animals.
Speaker 1: Any thoughts. I think it's an excellent point, and it's
Speaker 1: something that actually floated through my head when we are
Speaker 1: doing the research. But you know, you know how it
Speaker 1: is whenever we sit down and do a podcast. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever comes out of our mouth and our brains comes out.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a really great point to bring up.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I mean that the dog is wholly
Speaker 1: dependent on you. Why wouldn't they all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you know, you're the person who give them my food.
Speaker 1: I will cozy up to you. Yeah. So interesting thoughts there, Trevor.
Speaker 1: I love I love it when people, uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of answering a question with a question kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But but but I really enjoy when people
Speaker 1: write in uh like, harder questions based on what we've
Speaker 1: talked about and extract late more involved ponderings we do.
Speaker 1: We get so many of those notes. It's pretty awesome
Speaker 1: to see. That makes up, you know, tickling our brains
Speaker 1: a little bit. We also heard from a listener by
Speaker 1: the name of Brooke, who is a PhD candidate and
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology. Oh this is a good brain take. Yeah. Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie. After listening to a recent podcast on
Speaker 1: the evolution of our five fingers, I am sorry to
Speaker 1: report a disappointing fact for you. Stylist fingers are an
Speaker 1: unlive play future human appendage exclamation point. It's a creative
Speaker 1: idea that might even be useful to future humans, but
Speaker 1: suffers from a common misunderstanding of evolutionary adaptations. Living creatures
Speaker 1: don't just evolve new features because they are useful, or
Speaker 1: our ancestors would have evolved matches for fingers and nails.
Speaker 1: All new features have to arrive through the random process
Speaker 1: of mutation. And even assuming we've got mutant humans with
Speaker 1: stylish fingers, the stylist fingers would have to increase their
Speaker 1: chances of surviving and having babies in order to spread
Speaker 1: through all of humanity. I don't know about you, but
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd want a mate with stylist fingers.
Speaker 1: Add add to all of that evolutionary constraints. As you reported,
Speaker 1: we've had five fingers for a long time. Evolutionary speaking,
Speaker 1: and a likely he of human extinction before the mutation
Speaker 1: occurs and stylist fingers seemed very improbable, unless, of course,
Speaker 1: we figure out how to metically engineer ourselves, which we
Speaker 1: could maybe do question marks. So I don't know. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about that nists thinking about the gene plasticity
Speaker 1: of dogs, right, the ability for us to to breathe
Speaker 1: them and breathe the traits that we want, But I
Speaker 1: don't know that we would be able to do that
Speaker 1: in humans. Yeah, um, that means to be seen as suppose.
Speaker 1: But we we thank Brooke for writing that because she
Speaker 1: does make an important important point that evolution is about
Speaker 1: mutations occurring in those mutations being advantageous for the for
Speaker 1: the continuation of the species. Like if for some reason
Speaker 1: humans evolved a horn on their head like a rhinoceros,
Speaker 1: and I'm and I'm really and this is not gonna happen,
Speaker 1: but this is just an outrageous example to illustrate. Suddenly
Speaker 1: some people off horns, some don't, and the ones with
Speaker 1: horns are able to stab the potential mates that don't
Speaker 1: have horns. Therefore, only the horns males gets to get
Speaker 1: to a mate with the females. There's there, yeah somewhere
Speaker 1: run wild with it then, so hey, if you have
Speaker 1: anything to share with us, particularly if you have anything
Speaker 1: to add about the bone wars or archaeology or curious
Speaker 1: incidents from paleontology. I feel like I left one or
Speaker 1: two really interesting stories out, so I may have to
Speaker 1: unclose down myself. But anyway, you can find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook as blow the Mind will Blow the
Speaker 1: Mind and both of those to just do a quick
Speaker 1: search for that, And we really do love to hear
Speaker 1: from you, so please drop us a note at Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
Speaker 1: on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
Speaker 1: our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
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